Critical Essay by Henri Bergson

SOURCE: Bergson, Henri. “The Originality of Lucretius as a Philosopher.” In The Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius, edited and translated by Wade Baskin, pp. 65-83. Nedw York: Philosophical Library, 1959.

In the following excerpt, originally written in 1884, Bergson contends that Lucretius's study and love of nature and its laws helped to make his writings more poetic than those of either Democritus or Epicurus.

Epicurus borrowed most of his doctrine from the atomists and from the Cyrenaic school.

Atomism, one of the most profound philosophical systems developed in antiquity, was first expounded by Leucippus and his disciple, Democritus.1 These philosophers held that the best explanation of the universe was the simplest one. It is obvious that countless tragedies and comedies have been created from the simple, invariable letters of the alphabet. In the same way, according...